


Freedom, or Queen Liviana's Tiara

by hrhrionastar



Series: The Honeyverse [17]
Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: Episode: s01e22 Reckoning, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-07
Updated: 2012-01-07
Packaged: 2017-10-29 03:44:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/315446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hrhrionastar/pseuds/hrhrionastar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Darken knows the truth about Richard's return. He isn't sure how he can trust Kahlan again, but when his wife is possessed by the spirit of a long-dead victim of one of Darken's ancestors, he has to reevaluate his own behavior, as well as his relationship with Kahlan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Freedom, or Queen Liviana's Tiara

**Author's Note:**

> **Note:** This is part of the honeyverse, and takes place not long after _Up On A Housetop_ , in [](http://hrhrionastar.livejournal.com/73497.html#cutid1)The Creatormas Spirit.

_**Kahlan** : "People deserve a chance to change. To be better than the world made them."_

Darken turned the Sword of Truth over in his hands, watching it catch the light refracted through the stained glass windows of his study.

It had been years since he had so much as looked at the weapon of his worst enemy.

Richard, the brother who was foretold to kill him. Richard, who had vanished eight and a half years ago on the summer solstice, in a blinding explosion of power that had left no trace of the Seeker, of Cara, or of the Boxes of Orden.

Looking back, that total absence of blood or bone or charred metal buckle probably should have been a clue that Richard was not dead after all.

It could never be that simple.

Darken hated that Richard would return—in forty-eight and a half years according to the Confessed witchwoman in his dungeons—and he hated the thought that he would not be there to protect his children from a Seeker armed with the power of Orden.

He would rather have seen Cara dead than in the Seeker's power.

With unsettling double vision, he wondered if Richard would feel the same way about Darken's own marriage to Kahlan.

And that was what this was really about, of course. Why Darken was sitting staring at a sword and brooding while the shadows lengthened around him.

Kahlan.

She had betrayed him. Lied to him for years.

She had hated him once, of course. But things were different now…weren't they?

And she had told him the truth.

Darken had spent the past several days researching the magical phenomenon that had thrown Richard and Cara fifty-eight years forward in time, and had heard from Shota his wife's plan to strand them there.

Kahlan had Confessed Shota. She could have told the witchwoman to lie to Darken.

She could be testing him, waiting only for him to cross some invisible line before returning to her previous plan to erase their life together from history.

 _Nonsense_ , Darken told himself. _There is no line I haven't crossed, and she knows it._

Kahlan would have helped Richard kill him, and erased their marriage, their love, their children…

Nicholas and Dara and Dacey deserved better. At all costs, Richard must be prevented from harming them in any way.

That Kahlan could even consider undoing the greatest gifts Darken had ever received—how could he ever trust her again?

The hilt of the Sword of Truth was notched with use, but the blade gleamed. Darken sighted along it, and stood to fence with empty air.

Neither friend nor enemy kept him company now.

And the one woman whose presence might have warmed the emptiness in his heart was newly made a stranger to him again.

The room was shrouded in darkness. Only the vaguely magical glint of the Sword of Truth broke the twilight gloom.

It was past time to prepare for the annual new year fireworks display. It was a tradition in D'Hara, and tonight all those people willing to stand outdoors in the freezing cold would congregate in the city center and the courtyard of the palace. There was always quite a crowd.

Once, Darken had shunned the ceremony, uneasy with celebration of any kind. But for years, he and Kahlan had been taking the children to the roof to see the fireworks. It was a family tradition now, something they had created together. Darken wouldn't miss it.

He threw the Sword of Truth down across his desk with a clatter, and strode upstairs.

* * *

Darken had not expected Kahlan to be in their bedchamber. There was no reason to assume she wouldn't be there, of course.

He didn't know how to talk to her anymore.

In the early years of their marriage, they had discussed Nicholas, and the details of running the empire and building those hospitals and orphanages, which had only been the beginning of Kahlan's schemes for improving the quality of life for her people, and eventually his.

But there had remained an abyss of things unspoken between them, and Darken had gotten quite adept at sidestepping it.

He never lied to Kahlan. It did no good. But he was an expert at spinning events to suit him, charming her walls down…he still wondered how much that had affected the love and intimacy they had eventually found.

There were times when masks and misdirection were equally useless.

Now, though, he was out of practice.

Kahlan stood by the dark window, sparkling brighter than the first evening stars. Her hair was set in a cluster of black curls decorated with glimmers of gold. It fell halfway down her back. She was wearing a gown of white and gold. The cloth rustled as she turned.

As always, she took Darken's breath away.

She grew more beautiful every time he saw her.

Kahlan, to whom he had once expressed this opinion, had raised her eyebrows and laughed. "I'm thirty-four, Darken," she had pointed out. "I found another gray hair last week."

She had no idea how awe-inspiring she was, and that only added to her appeal.

But tonight there was something…Darken tensed. There was something _wrong._

Kahlan reached up to adjust the glittering tiara she wore, nestled among those curls. It was white-gold, set with diamonds.

Darken had given it to her years ago. She never wore it.

"Kahlan?" he asked.

Kahlan smiled. The expression transformed her face, giving her an utterly foreign look of spite.

"She's gone," the woman wearing his wife's face announced.

Darken's blood pounded with the force of his fury. "Let her go," he ordered.

She laughed. "Who are you to demand such a thing of me?" she asked, and then her eyes narrowed.

Darken felt the tingling sensation of magic making his hair stand on end. The air was charged with it, as during a lightning storm.

He closed his eyes and looked at her with his second sight.

There was a dirty blue glow around Kahlan. It was thickest around the tiara.

Horribly, it seemed to hover just shy of physical form. That blue light was alive somehow, Darken knew it.

"Rahl!" Kahlan-who-was-not-Kahlan shouted. She looked disgusted. "After all this time, Melchiorr's accursed blood still endures. I tried to end the line, but he imprisoned me. Now I will complete the task."

She drew Kahlan's daggers and charged forward, only slightly hampered by her sweeping golden skirts.

Darken drew his own daggers to meet her attack, his mind racing. Sometimes, one's life depended on how fast one could think.

Melchiorr. The name rang a bell.

As a child, Darken's father had forced him to learn the names and histories of each of his ancestors.

Melchiorr Rahl had ruled five hundred years ago. He was known for starting the disastrous War of the Bridges, which, as far as anyone could discern, had mainly consisted of burning them. He had been a wizard.

Also, there had been two wives, if Darken recalled correctly. Consecutive, not contemporaneous. The first one had died within a year of the marriage.

He could not have said what instinct made him ask, as his and Kahlan's daggers clashed together above the bed, "Liviana?"

She paused. Her eyes were huge and dark in the candlelight. The blue aura emanating from the tiara hovered just shy of being visible.

She looked nothing like Kahlan.

But Darken had to believe there was a way to get his wife back.

"You know my story?" Liviana asked. "Then you know why I must destroy you."

"Melchiorr killed you, didn't he?" Darken made an effort to conceal the thought, _but obviously not dead enough…_

Liviana's eyes flashed fire. She struck at Darken's heart with one of Kahlan's daggers; he parried, and she pushed him relentlessly toward the wall.

Darken's daggers were poisoned. A scratch could kill, and it was Kahlan who would die, not Liviana.

The knowledge was like a lead weight in his stomach.

"No," Liviana panted. "He didn't kill me. He imprisoned my spirit for all eternity. He knew how much I loved Antonio, and he _murdered_ him!"

She was like a whirlwind, kicking Kahlan's skirts impatiently out of her way as she pressed her attack.

Darken defended himself as best he could, while his thoughts raced.

"Antonio was your lover," he deduced. "Melchiorr killed him and trapped your spirit in that tiara because you were unfaithful?"

Catching her soul like a fly in amber for all eternity seemed a slight overreaction.

"Antonio was my world!" Liviana cried. Her eyes burned like tiny stars in Kahlan's white face. "And Melchiorr killed him! So I destroyed his world, too. I smothered his evil spawn in the cradle."

 _A baby_ , Darken realized. _She's talking about a baby!_

Perhaps Melchiorr's reaction had not been so extreme.

"I will never see my beloved again," Liviana announced.

Darken felt the cool metal kiss of a dagger at his throat.

He could have freed himself. But not without hurting Kahlan.

"At least I can be revenged upon Melchiorr's foul line," Liviana hissed.

Darken stared into those haunted eyes, desperate for a glimpse of the woman he loved. He didn't want to die without seeing Kahlan again.

This was a nightmare.

He needed Kahlan.

"I can free you," Darken promised recklessly. "Reunite you with your beloved."

"How?" For a moment, Liviana looked uncertain.

Darken grasped the wrist holding the dagger to his throat. Kahlan's skin was warm and smooth to the touch. He hated that Liviana dared possess his wife's body.

The tiara was the key. But it seemed unlikely that merely knocking it off Kahlan's crown of curls would be enough to release her.

Certainly that would not free Liviana's spirit. The spell had already lasted five hundred years. How powerful Melchiorr must have been, to keep his first wife enchanted for so long. To keep her soul from finding peace, to keep her forever separated from the one man she loved more than any other.

"Impossible," Liviana dismissed the hope Darken offered, of a way to escape her endless imprisonment.

She looked at Darken's fingers, clenched around Kahlan's wrist, and smiled toothily. "You love this woman, don't you?"

Darken said nothing. He refused to give Liviana any hold over his emotions.

It didn't seem to matter.

Liviana stared into his eyes. There was utter silence for three heartbeats.

"Would you die for her?"

The world retreated, until there was only Darken and Liviana.

He thought about all the misery he had brought Kahlan, like an echo of what Melchiorr had done to Liviana. It seemed he was doomed to repeat the mistakes of his ancestors.

He thought of the Keeper.

And he thought of Nicholas, who was not ready to take the throne. Who would not be safe from Liviana, if she so much as guessed his existence, and she would.

"Yes," Darken whispered.

"Good." Liviana smiled brightly. Her fingers tensed around the dagger.

"Take my life and be satisfied," Darken begged. "Go back to your prison, and leave my family alone."

There was the beginning of bright pain. Darken tightened his grip on Kahlan's wrist, aware that he could break it, make Liviana drop the dagger, put his hands around her throat and choke her into unconsciousness…

A memory struck him, vivid as the perfect agony of an agiel: the Keep of Edron, the delicately sharp Shakai'ah, and Kahlan screaming.

He wondered if she still screamed, behind the cruel parody of her face filled with Liviana's undying spite.

The door creaked open, and Liviana turned.

"Mommy?"

It was Dara.

She stood on the threshold of her parents' room, her blue eyes, so like her mother's, wide with confusion.

Darken felt more than saw Liviana raise a hand. Lightning streamed from her fingers.

He had thought Kahlan being possessed was a nightmare.

Darken couldn't even draw breath to scream his daughter's name.

He called forth every last reserve of strength and cast the most powerful unbinding spell he knew.

Darken could feel the enchantment on the tiara now, fighting him every step of the way. It was like wading through molasses, and every second Liviana's spirit remained here instead of the Underworld meant deadly peril for his wife and daughter.

He refused to lose them. Whether he deserved it or not, Darken had a life full of love. He would rather die than let harm come to Kahlan or Dara.

The realization was oddly freeing.

 _Help me!_ he shouted in his thoughts, to whoever or whatever would listen.

 _I thought you'd never ask._ The voice was dry, and warmly ironic. It was simultaneously louder than a shout and softer than a whisper.

Before Darken could demand an explanation, he felt a sudden surge of power.

The spell binding Liviana to her tiara crumbled like ashes. The blue faded from Darken's second sight.

The tiara now pulsed with a kind of dark light, gray and hungry.

At the same instant, Darken heard glass shatter.

The spell was too strong! It was unbinding everything in the immediate vicinity.

There was a sudden cool breeze as the windowpanes fell in tiny shards of glass to the distant ground, and the rustling of pages as every book in the room lost its binding.

Dara still stood in front of what was left of the door. The wood was charred and smoking, but Dara appeared unhurt.

Darken inhaled shakily. The cold air was like a knife in his lungs, and the shallow cut across his throat stung.

Dara was pristinely ungifted. No magical lightning could harm her, no matter how powerful. She couldn't even see it.

Several things occurred to Darken at once. Dara still looked terrified. Kahlan lay across the bed in a crumpled heap of white, black, and gold. Above her, tiny pebbles were just beginning to fall from the mosaic of the People's Palace on the ceiling.

Some of those things were pointed. Others were fairly large. And if they all fell…it would be like an indoor hailstorm, and Kahlan lay directly in its path.

"Dara! Under the table, now!" Darken yelled, over the sound of falling mosaic rocks.

He threw himself over Kahlan, burying his face in her hair.

As the pieces of mosaic rained down on his back, Darken prayed Kahlan was all right, and herself again. If she died because of him…

His robes afforded him some protection. As this was a holiday, he was wearing the heavy brocade set. He was mildly surprised to find they had an actual use.

At last, all was still.

Darken lifted his head.

The bedchamber looked as though a storm had ripped through it. Dara was still crouched under the table. It appeared to have been built without the aid of magic, thank the Creator, and so it still stood.

Kahlan's nightstand was a pile of gilded matchsticks, however. Pages of books lay like snowflakes all over the floor, occasionally weighed down with mosaic pebbles. The charred door hung off its hinges, and Darken caught a glimpse of hurrying feet in the corridor.

The curtains danced in the freezing cold air drifting in through the window. The candles had all gone out.

"Darken?" Kahlan asked. "I can't see you."

His first horrified thought, that Liviana had somehow blinded her, was quickly assuaged by the realization that he had been looking at the room with wizard's sight.

Darken snapped his fingers. Every candle was instantly relit.

The spell had never worked so quickly before.

Kahlan sat up. She ran a hand through her disarranged curls, and looked as glad as Darken felt to find that the tiara was no longer on her head. It lay on the bedspread, diamonds glittering innocently.

Dara ran forward and threw her arms around Kahlan's knees. "Mommy, you're back!"

Kahlan laughed shakily. "Yes, I'm back."

"My lord, are you all right?" The junior mistress of the Mord'Sith who stood in the doorway looked pale with fear.

Darken nodded. Liviana was gone. He could feel it.

Of course, that didn't mean everything was all right. Not necessarily.

Kahlan had scooped Dara into her lap, and now she frowned. "You're bleeding!" she exclaimed. There was a small cut across Dara's cheek, relic of one of the sharper mosaic pebbles. Kahlan wiped away the thin trickle of blood with her embroidered handkerchief, while Dara squirmed.

Darken ran his sleeve across his throat. The blood wouldn't show against D'Hara's traditional dark red.

Kahlan looked from the handkerchief smeared with Dara's blood to the abandoned tiara.

Before Darken could ask what she thought she was doing, she picked up the tiara and ran the bloody handkerchief across it.

He narrowed his second sight. Suppose he were wrong and Liviana weren't really gone, and she possessed Kahlan again?

But the grasping, gray anti-light of the tiara simply disappeared. The magic was gone. All of it.

Dara reached eagerly for the tiara, and then looked up apprehensively at her mother.

"Yes, you may have it," Kahlan answered the unspoken question. "I think you're old enough for a tiara, don't you?"

"I'm four," Dara said solemnly. "Tomorrow, I'm four."

Kahlan set the tiara on her daughter's fair hair, and Dara grinned. She twirled for Darken and Kahlan, showing off.

The Mord'Sith shifted her weight awkwardly. She'd come to defend Lord Rahl, and instead she'd found a domestic interlude with his wife and daughter.

Darken felt her discomfort, and grinned. He wished every danger could melt away into Dara dancing in a new tiara that was slightly too big for her, and threatening to slip over her eyes.

"Mommy, Daddy!" Dara grabbed Darken's hand and a handful of Kahlan's golden skirts. "Fireworks!"

Darken laughed. He rose, still holding Dara's hand, and they walked to the door together.

Kahlan and the Mord'Sith followed, stepping daintily over a few charred pieces of door.

* * *

The fireworks were all they were supposed to be. Nicholas and Dara clung to the stone parapet, watching with breathless joy.

As a red and gold star burst into tiny lights, Kahlan swept off her cloak, and folded it neatly before setting it down.

The spell of warmth Darken had cast on the rooftop seemed particularly strong tonight. The air was almost balmy, like an autumn evening.

Kahlan raised her eyebrows and gave Darken a speaking look. It was an invitation to share his thoughts.

Darken met her eyes, but he didn't say anything. He didn't know where to begin.

In his arms, Dacey stirred a little. Her fingers closed around a lock of Darken's hair, and he boosted her higher against his shoulder to keep her from pulling it.

Darken breathed deeply, inhaling the ambient magic along with the air. It was always present, but tonight he was more aware of it than ever.

Liviana could have killed him.

But he would not have lost everything. Darken trusted that Dahlia would have recognized that Kahlan was not herself and prevented her from harming the children, and as long as the three of them lived and learned and loved, he knew he had done something right.

A particularly magnificent firework hurtled upward and burst, and Dara gasped and hid behind Nicholas.

Kahlan's smile was warmer than sunlight.

She had wanted to invite Jennsen to celebrate with them tonight. Darken still didn't feel comfortable with the sister he'd never really known, and yet Kahlan had done more to harm him than Jennsen ever had.

She still could. She would always be able to.

Which left Darken with the same nagging question that had haunted his thoughts since Kahlan told him of Richard's inevitable return.

_Why didn't she?_

* * *

It was so late that some people would call it early. In summer, the sun would already be rising, but on this the first day of a new year, the sky was still velvet blackness.

Or so Darken assumed. There were no windows in the library.

He sat at one of the heavy wooden tables between bookcases, working.

There was always more work to be done in running an empire. If you wanted time for yourself, you couldn't wait around for people to give it to you. You had to take it.

And right now, Darken didn't want time to think.

The candle flames jumped. There was the rustle of skirts and the scent of lavender. Darken watched a shadow approach, projected onto the books.

Most people assumed they all contained dark magic. In fact, that was only one section of the library. Darken knew every section, from D'Haran history to literature to abstract geometry, and had at least glanced at every book.

This place was a haven of his childhood. Panis Rahl had never been a great reader.

Darken should have been angry that she was here, invading his privacy.

Instead, her mere presence soothed knots of stress in his neck and shoulders he hadn't known were there.

"Why aren't you asleep?" Darken asked.

He stared down at the parchment in front of him without seeing it.

"I thought we should talk," his wife replied calmly. Darken heard the soft whisper of her skirts as she perched on the edge of the table. "Also, our bed is still covered in little pieces of mosaic."

"I forgot," Darken said mechanically. "I meant to have someone do something about that."

"I asked Dahlia to take care of it," Kahlan said. "And the door. You know, this could be the perfect opportunity for a little redecorating; if we knocked down the left wall, there would be more room for the table, and maybe one of those twenty-seventh century screens from the attic."

"Another heirloom?" Darken said drily. "Aren't you being rather calm about this?"

He still wouldn't look at her.

"Well…" There was a shiver of fabric as Kahlan shrugged. "This isn't the first time I've been possessed by the restless spirit of a woman who destroyed herself for love."

There was obviously a story there. Equally obviously, it would involve Richard somehow.

Still, it was unlikely the Seeker had ever given Kahlan a tiara inhabited by the soul of a woman driven mad by hatred and love.

"Melchiorr killed Liviana's lover, and kept even their souls apart for five hundred years," Darken said slowly. "She would have done anything to punish him."

"You set her free," Kahlan said.

"But I didn't set _you_ free." The words were out before Darken could call them back. "I trapped you." With another piece of jewelry, in fact. The Rada'Han Kahlan had worn for the first few years of their marriage. A precaution. Common sense, really. So why did it feel like a betrayal, a denial of who she was?

Kahlan said nothing.

"You hated everything I was. You told me so. And when you had lost everything, I forced you to marry me."

"You didn't force me, Darken," Kahlan protested. She put a hand on the table, and the candlelight caught her wedding ring. "You did coerce me."

"You were so sure that I deserved to die, as the prophecy says. You gave up everything for the chance to 'put things right.'"

Darken paused. The silence was heavy with expectation.

He still wouldn't meet Kahlan's eyes, but he let himself look at her thigh, resting on the wood. She was still wearing that white and gold gown. Her body was twisted toward him.

She was waiting.

"What changed your mind?" Darken asked, his voice utterly without inflection.

"I love you," Kahlan replied simply.

"You love Richard," Darken countered, as if this were a simple argument over an affair of state. "You loved him and you lost him, fifty-eight years into the future. Separated as surely as Liviana and Antonio."

"Darken," Kahlan said gently, "I am not Liviana, and you are not Melchiorr. What he did was wrong, but she let herself become just as evil. She murdered her own son. Her hate destroyed her."

So perhaps Nicholas was the real reason Kahlan had chosen not to help Richard erase this world.

Darken understood that. He longed to protect Nicholas from every ill wind and ignorant prejudice, and frequently strove to do so despite the knowledge that he would never possess that much power over fate.

"I was aware of everything, while Liviana possessed me," Kahlan's warm voice went on. " _That_ is true imprisonment. I was so terrified of losing you, of hurting you or Dara. And I couldn't stop telling myself how stupid I was to put on that tiara in the first place. But I knew that you would find a way to fix it."

Fix it? If he hadn't been able to free Liviana's spirit, the only other way would have been to kill Kahlan.

Darken didn't know if he could have brought himself to do so.

"You are so strong," Kahlan said. "After everything you suffered, you have fought your way out of the darkness. My predecessor as Mother Confessor once told me that what a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give. I didn't understand that until I got to know you. All your life has been shadowed by prophecy. And yet every day, you give your people justice and peace. You snatch every moment you can with Nicholas, Dara, and Dacey. They know that they have a father who loves them. Liviana threatened your family, and you still did the right thing and sent her to the Underworld to be reunited with Antonio. That took compassion as well as power. I love you, Darken Rahl. And I believe in you."

Darken raised shocked eyes to Kahlan's face.

He could see her crooked smile through the film of tears obscuring his vision.

Her hair was a dark curtain sweeping down over her shoulders and the bodice of her gown. It showed the creamy white swell of her breasts. Her neck was innocent of any jewelry. There was a tiny scar on her upper lip, with a story Darken knew. Her eyes were bluer than a summer sky.

Liviana had inhabited this same body. But Kahlan was a thousand times more beautiful.

How could he ever have doubted her?

Trust did not come easily to Darken. It made what he shared with Kahlan all the more precious.

"I love you so much," Darken said roughly. He felt run ragged by emotion.

Kahlan tossed her hair over her shoulder and leaned forward across the table toward Darken.

Their lips met.

**Author's Note:**

> "What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give." ~P.D. James


End file.
